My cheeks burn when I hear footsteps heading this way. Thayer busies himself tidying the first aid kit when we suddenly both stare at my legs and apparently realize at the very same time that I’m not wearing any pants.
Thayer looks quickly around the room and grabs a rumpled blanket on the armchair. He throws it at me.
“Fucking cover yourself,” he growls in a heated whisper.
Ugh, thenerveof him!
“You did it,” I snap.
He gives me another look laced with the wholeif you were minespeech.
So I do the only sensible thing. I stick my tongue out at him.
My God, what is wrong with me? If tonight has taught me anything, it’s that nowhere is safe. People are violent and untrustworthy, and Thayer has basically just said as much.
So, naturally, I kissed him.
Ugh!
Lyam enters the room with Mario Rossi as I clumsily cover my bare legs and yank my pants halfway up.
I saw both of them when I first came in but was so fraught with nerves, I barely recognized them. I remember Mario now.
Lyam doesn’t even look at me. If he notices anything out of place, or if he cares, he doesn’t let on.
“Get her out of here, Thayer. They haven’t traced her back to us yet, so I called in some favors. They don’t know where she is or who she is, but there’s a posse on the prowl for the tall, pretty woman with the hot-pink hair.”
Mario nods, corroborating this. “Word’s already gone far and wide.” He turns to me. “You were at Avelline’s?”
I shrug, still blushing, but very, very thankful for that damn blanket.
“The Chaberts, Thayer,” Lyam says in a low voice.
“Fuck.” Thayer looks like he wants to torture, maim, and eventually kill somebody.
“You know what this means.”
Lyam and Thayer stare at each other until Thayer finally nods.
“Uh, does someone want to fill me in? Because I have no idea what this means. I don’t know any of these names.”
I try to pretend that I’m very put together, after having fallen and scraped myself to pieces, begging hysterically for help, allowing Thayer to doctor me up, thenkissing the man.
Very put together and grown up, indeed.
I want to sob. I want to hide.
I want him to kiss me again.
“You two tell me if anyone’s in the foyer,” Thayer says. When they go, he turns and hisses to me, “Get dressed.”
I quickly yank my pants up over my ass and zip them just as Lyam and Mario come back.
“No one.”
Mario sits beside me and gives me a look of concern. “Do you have anywhere to go?”
I swallow, my predicament suddenly seeming insurmountable. Where can I hide?
